Holly woman heading to Winter Olympics in Sochi as volunteer

Taylor Dery of Groveland Township with her snowboard at Mt. Holly. Dery, 22, is going to Scohi on January 15th to volunteer for the Winter Olympics. Monday, January 13, 2014. Tim Thompson-The Oakland Press

Where are the sochi games?

The 2014 Olympic Winter Games will be the first time that the Russian Federation will have hosted the Winter Games; the Soviet Union hosted the 1980 Summer Games in Moscow. The host city Sochi has a population of 400,000 people and is situated in Krasnodar, which is the third largest region in Russia, according to olympic.org.

The Games will be organized in two clusters -- a coastal cluster for ice events in Sochi, and a mountain cluster located in the Krasnaya Polyana Mountains. People will travel around 30 minutes between the coastal to mountain clusters.

The Sochi Olympic Park is built along the Black Sea coast in the Imeretinskaya Valley, where all the ice venues such as the Bolshoi Ice Palace, the Maly Ice Palace, the Olympic Oval, the Sochi Olympic Skating Centre, the Olympic Curling Centre, the Central Stadium, the Main Olympic Village and the International Broadcast Centre and Main Press Center, have been constructed for the 2014 Games.

The mountain cluster in Krasnaya Polyana will be home to all the skiing and sliding sports, according to olympic.org

Right after the London Olympics in fall, 2012, Western Michigan University student Taylor Dery had an idea.

“I wanted to get into sports event management so I figured what better way than to get to the 2014 Winter Olympics,” said Dery, 22 of Holly.

Dery applied to be a volunteer and was screened by officials for months. This past December, she learned by email she had been accepted.

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“I was ecstatic,” said Dery, who graduated in December.

“I was happy, a little nervous but mainly excited.”

On Jan. 15, Dery will board a plane for the Sochi games in Russia.

A snowboarder and skier herself, Dery will work in the opening and closing ceremonies, but she won’t know her specific assignment until she arrives.

Only 700 Americans are going as volunteers, she said.

Dery applied last year and had to fulfill several requirements including passing an English proficiency test, Skype interview and live interview with the International Olympic Committee in Toronto.

Once at Sochi, she will work five to six days a week.

“On off days, we can go see the events,” she said. Entry should be free, she said.

She has met other volunteers virtually through online forums on Facebook.

Dery has never been to an Olympics but did serve as a volunteer during spring break in 2009 at the U.S. Snowboarding Association National Championships in Colorado.

“It was really fun and interesting,” she said.

“It gave me the idea of what I wanted to go into in college.”

She has learned about Russia through a special online portal.

“We have training assignments and we have to memorize (information) about the country, its culture, past Olympics, regulations and maps of the park,” she said.

During her final college semester, she had a large credit load and added the Olympics training on top of that.

“It was a little difficult,” she said. “Some days were a little overwhelming.”

Dery still graduated with a high GPA.

She is not worried about security at Sochi.

“If you are alone, you should only be out in daytime in a public area. At night, you are to stay in groups of three to four or more and stay in lighted areas. There is going to be very high security during the Olympics,” she said.

She noted more than 25 people died in Mexico City in a gun battle days before the 1968 Olympics there.

“They still held the Olympics and it ran smooth,” she said. “I”m not really worried.”

Dery will be gone more than a month, returning Feb. 25.

The flight will arrive in Sochi, a coastal area “similar to Florida,” she said. The city with a subtropical humid climate is located on the eastern edge of the Black Sea.

“Then we’ll drive up the mountain where they’ve got cold and snow,” said Dery.

The mountains in question are Krasnaya Polyana.

Dery is able to speak a few Russian words, she said, and she has an app on her phone for translating the language. “All the signs will have English translations,” she said.

Dery is looking forward to seeing U.S. snowboarders Hannah Teter and Kelly Clark.

“They are a great inspiration to me as an athlete,” she said.

About the Author

Carol Hopkins covers Waterford and White Lake townships. She has a master's degree in journalism from the University of Michigan, and she worked as a senior editor for Detroit Monthly magazine and as a reporter for The Oakland Press since 2003. Reach the author at carol.hopkins@oakpress.com
or follow Carol on Twitter: @OPCarolHopkins.